The 2016 Fintech Finance 35: Mariano Belinky

When corporate venture capital investments hit their mark, they have a direct strategic impact on the parents business. Santander InnoVentures, the London-based strategic investing unit of Spains Banco Santander, showed how its done after participating in a $135 million Series E financing for Atlanta-based Kabbage in November 2015. Santander UK began working with the online lender in January to create an automated underwriting platform that delivers almost immediate decisions on small- and medium-size-business loan applications. If youre a small business in the U.K., it takes up to four weeks to get an answer from a bank, says InnoVentures managing partner Mariano Belinky. Weve taken that to minutes. In ten minutes you have an answer. Also in the U.K., Santander in May released a pilot app for international payments, using the blockchain technology of San Franciscobased Ripple, in which InnoVentures made a $4 million Series A investment in October 2015. Were making good progress with our portfolio companies in terms of adding value to them and them adding value to Santander and our clients, says Belinky, 41, a former McKinsey & Co. principal who took charge of the venture fund five months after it was launched in July 2014 with $100 million. Some 70 percent of that original amount has been placed in 12 portfolio companies. In July of this year, Banco Santander put an additional $100 million into InnoVentures, in part to focus more on Latin America  exploring applications for financial inclusion, such as microlending and micropayments  and to make a big push toward artificial intelligence, says Belinky, who completed five years of doctoral studies in AI at Barcelonas Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in 2009. In March, InnoVentures took part in a $5 million Series A round for London-based Elliptic, which applies machine learning in blockchain monitoring and compliance, and in June it bought an undisclosed stake in Socure, a New York company that uses pattern recognition in verifying digital identities. The latter is an example of what Belinky calls a by-the-way business model. I like when an entrepreneur comes to me and says, Weve solved X and, by the way, we are using AI.